


Griever

by purple_bookcover



Category: Final Fantasy VIII, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Ashelix Week (Fire Emblem), Crossover, M/M, Memory Loss, ashe as rinoa, felix as squall, time compression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Ashe and Felix arrive at Ultimecia's castle to destroy her and end time compression. Ashe discovers that in order to set the flow of time right, however, they will have to pay a terrible price.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8
Collections: Ashelix Week 2020





	Griever

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS THE MOST SELF-INDULGENT MOMENT OF MY LIFE AND NONE OF YOU CAN STOP ME
> 
> Ashelix Week, Day 4: Imma be honest. I ignored the prompts cuz I just wanted to do this.

Ultimecia’s castle towers above them. Its jagged spires tear at the sky. The straggles of gray cloud skittering low overhead are shredded by the clawing reach of the dread edifice. 

Felix and Ashe stand small before the massive doors. That ominous gateway yawns open, yet Ashe can see little beyond the stone steps. The entrance to the castle welcomes them like a beast’s maw, ravenous and foul. A stale air sighs out, a breath putrid with old magic, with the hunger of ageless beasts and the terror of fresh horrors wrought by a witch’s schemes. 

Ashe takes Felix’s hand. In his other hand, Felix holds his gunblade, the leather of his glove groaning as he tightens his grip. 

“Are you ready?” Felix says. 

Ashe can not fathom a universe in which anyone could be ready for this, ready to face down a sorceress powerful enough to break time itself. In the end, his readiness doesn’t matter. They have to do this. They are the only ones left who can. 

He squeezes Felix’s hand in response. 

“We’ll save them,” Ashe says. He isn’t sure whom he’s reassuring. “Everyone who got us here, everyone who should be here with us. We’re strong enough.” Ashe’s dog, Loog, whines as though in agreement.

Felix doesn’t reply. Ashe doesn’t really expect him to. Felix is as odd and taciturn as he was when they met, but Ashe has come to learn his subtle moods. This one is readiness, single-minded determination. Felix will keep pushing on, no matter what, and Ashe will make sure he’s at Felix’s side the whole way.

He isn’t sure if he’s strong enough for this. He isn’t like Felix. He hasn’t trained with SeeD. But if they’re going to see this through, bring down Ultimecia, save the world, their friends and each other, then Ashe has no choice but to be good enough. 

Felix starts toward the doors, but Ashe holds him back a moment, stepping between Felix and the entrance to the castle. He releases Felix’s hand to stroke his thumbs along Felix’s jaw. Ashe says nothing, just watches him for a moment before settling a soft kiss against his mouth. 

Once, not long ago, this would have been unthinkable, impossible. But every moment since Ashe met Felix has been impossible, each precious second a new miracle. 

Ashe returns to Felix’s side, takes up his hand again. “Let’s go,” he says. 

They enter the castle together, Loog at their heels.

#

_Memory 3_

Red lit the vast darkness. 

The black stretched on and on outside the window, endless in every direction. It had been terrifying, at first, but Felix grew accustomed to staring into the fathomless expanse of space. 

The moon writhed below him. It looked like a larva pupating, clawing out of a shed husk. What oozed out of that cracked shell was not a butterfly, but a ceaseless spew of horrors, a pulsating pit of beasts coalescing for some terrible purpose. 

They formed a beady red eye on the surface of the moon, an eye that began to weep, until it exploded in a gush of crimson. Felix watched beasts shoot through space and toward the planet, thousands upon thousands of monsters he could not stop. 

The door of the escape pod hissed as it opened. 

“It started,” Ashe said, floating behind where Felix sat. 

“Yeah.”

“It’s going to be bad, huh?”

“Probably.” Felix tried not to think too hard about what must be happening down on the planet. They’d deal with it as soon as they got there, if they got there. “You should put your seat belt on.”

Ashe said nothing to that, but Felix heard his hand tighten on the chair. Another thing not to think too hard about. Everything had changed in space. Ashe himself, yes, but also, to some extent, Felix. 

( _To a large extent._ )

Ashe drifted around the chair, letting the low gravity drop him right into Felix’s lap. 

Felix caught him reflexively. “What are you doing?”

Ashe put his arms around Felix’s neck, snuggling against his chest. “I just want to stay like this for a moment.”

“Why?”

Ashe laughed against him. “Haven’t you ever just wanted to be held?”

“Not really.”

( _You’re such a liar._ )

“I see.” Ashe’s voice fell. “Well, I find it comforting.”

“Even--” Felix cut himself off, but Ashe seemed to hear the rest of the question. 

“Especially if it’s you,” Ashe said. “You are … You’ve become the person I find the most comforting. And the most frustrating and annoying.” ( _You certainly earn the title for most frustrating._ )

“...Whatever.”

( _...Whatever._ )

Ashe laughed again, hugging Felix closer. Felix should have pushed him away, should have insisted on the seat belt. It was absurdly unsafe trying to reenter the planet’s atmosphere this way. 

He didn’t. Rather, he shifted his hands, clumsy and unsure, but trying to find a path toward feeling whatever it was he was meant to be feeling. It was like lighting a candle in the wind. He tried to cup the tenuous flame in his hands, but he wasn’t sure what exactly it was he was chasing, only that he wanted to find it. 

And perhaps, for a moment, holding Ashe against him as they hurtled toward earth, he did. 

( _You did. We did._ )

#

Ashe stumbles as he crosses the threshold into the castle and the memory hits him. He gasps. The very air around him thrums with malevolence. He feels the breath leave his lungs, feels the memory seep out with it. It doesn’t go of its own accord, he knows. This is partly his own doing. He isn’t yet sure how, but he’s positive he’s played a role in the tragedy. 

“Ashe?”

He shakes himself, giving Felix’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m OK. It’s...” 

Something is wrong. Something is different. There’d been a ship. The moon, glowing like a red eye, writhing with infection. 

“Ashe.” 

He swallows the wrongness down. Whatever is happening is about to get worse, but he has to push through it, he has to be strong enough. 

“We need to hurry,” Ashe says. 

Felix looks skeptical, but Ashe drags him deeper into the castle, Loog padding along at their heels. 

Whatever Felix thinks of Ashe’s stumble, he seems to forget it as they fight their way through Ultimecia’s lair. The vile contamination of her distorted magic attracts beasts unlike anything they’ve yet encountered on their long, strange journey. 

Felix’s gunblade cuts the monsters down just as it’s cut down everything else in their path, until they come to the highest point in the castle. They climb stairs coiling up a narrow spire until they stand before two massive doors. Beasts out of legends battle on the dark, heavy barriers. When the portal swings open, darkness yawns beyond it, fathomless darkness stretching into eternity.

Ashe can taste the wrongness of it, even standing here at the threshold. It only gets worse when he and Felix step inside, hand in hand again.

There is … nothing. They walk forward, but on a floor Ashe can neither see nor feel. The doors are lost behind them, swallowed by the emptiness consuming them. 

“She’s here,” Felix says.

Ashe knows he’s right. It’s a pressure, a hum in the air like the buzz of electricity sizzling along his skin. 

And then she’s there, oozing out of the darkness, peeling back the layers of inky blackness to materialize before them. Something shifts – the world or time or both. It’s wrong, like the air is now sandpaper grating against Ashe’s skin. Everything is _shifted_ , off just a little. 

Ashe is off as well. His very being is stretched thin, grating against itself. The threads that tether him to _here_ are fraying. 

Felix either doesn’t feel it or doesn’t care. He drops Ashe’s hand, charging right in, gunblade raised. Perhaps this is just his way of acknowledging the wrongness – by fighting it. 

Ashe fights it in a different way.

#

_Memory 2_

Felix hated every step that brought him closer to the stage. He could already hear the music, an upbeat tune that Annette, Ingrid, Sylvain and Caspar were performing passably. Ashe kept tugging on his hand, dragging him nearer to the music and lights. 

It was for him, he knew. ( _It was for me, you mean. They did this for me. So I could talk to you. So I could try to get close to you._ ) It was to “help” him, ( _to help me_ ) but Felix wasn’t feeling particularly supported just then. He was feeling … humiliated. 

( _I knew._ )

Ashe stopped, mercifully. They lingered before the stage. Ashe dropped his hand to clap for their friends when the song ended. Annette took a little bow and even Felix couldn’t miss the way she winked at Ashe before starting the next song. 

( _She was never exactly subtle, was she?_ )

The next song was far less energetic than the first. It was … it was... 

Romantic. 

Felix would have bolted if he hadn’t also frozen. 

“I saw you smiling at me,” Annette sang. “Was it real or just my fantasy?”

( _It was real, Felix. I promise. Every second of it was real._ )

Felix startled when Ashe looped his arm through Felix’s. Ashe led him away, to the edge of the arena, a quieter, darker little corner where the music and light were muffled by distance. 

Felix let out a breath as they sat in the cool darkness. 

“Oh, what’s this?”

Felix jerked. Ashe was settling beside him, a magazine pinched between two fingers like it might be full of bugs. 

“He actually--” Felix choked.

Ashe just laughed and tossed the dirty magazine aside. “Really setting the mood, huh?” 

It was a joke, probably, but it made heat crawl up Felix’s neck. He shook his head, trying to think of anything but the way the starlight mirrored the pinpricks scattered across Ashe’s cheeks. Why was he thinking about that now? The world was falling apart and he was... 

“You wanted something?” Felix said. 

( _Changing the subject. Coward._ )

Ashe was sitting close enough their knees almost touched. The effect became more pronounced when Ashe leaned toward him. 

“It’s about your promotion,” Ashe said. “Things are going to change, huh? You’ll be working for SeeD all the time.”

“I guess.”

“I just...” 

Felix tensed in that pause. Ashe shouldn’t even be here right now. Every moment since that mission on the train was borrowed time. Felix was a SeeD, meant to drop in, do the job and leave. But Ashe had never left.

( _I never will._ ) 

“Don’t do it all alone,” Ashe said. 

“What?” 

“You’re probably thinking that you’re just going to go back to being a SeeD now, right?” Ashe said. “That things will go back to ‘normal.’ That you can handle this all on your own, without any help.”

He was, but Felix suspected saying that aloud would yield only trouble. 

Ashe reached over, taking his hand. Felix had to still the instinct to pull away. 

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Ashe said. 

Felix looked down at their overlapping hands. Annette still sang somewhere behind them, her voice soft and lovely in the still evening. 

“Is that what you wanted?” Felix said.

“Yup,” Ashe said. 

Felix exhaled a sigh. 

Ashe laughed. “You have that look again.”

“What look?”

“When you’re thinking and you’re annoyed, you always have that same look.” ( _It’s cute._ )

“Whatever.”

Ashe laughed again. Felix studied his shoes. His legs dangled off the edge of the platform where he sat, swinging over the solar panels arrayed below. They lay dark now, but during the day they gleamed, powering all of Fisherman’s Horizon. 

He heard rather than saw Ashe stand, heard footsteps pace behind him. Then, a voice brushed against his ear. 

“You can’t do it all alone.” 

Ashe shoved him before he even finished speaking. 

Felix flailed, grunting in surprise as he fell to the solar panels below. Ashe jumped down after him.

“What the hell?” 

“You can’t do it all alone,” Ashe said. 

They were alone now, more fully alone than they’d been up there on the platform. The solar panels were below it, low enough that the song playing on the stage dimmed to a low hum.

Ashe stood before him, unassuming, hands clasped behind his back. If Felix didn’t know better, he’d think the rebel leader turned unwilling sorcerer was innocent. 

“We want you to talk to us more,” Ashe said. “Ask us for help. Rely on us.”

Felix crossed his arms over his chest. 

“You know you could ask me-- any of us for help. Any time. If there was anything we could do, any way we could help, we’d do it. Any one of us.”

Felix turned away, putting his back to Ashe, leaving his arms crossed. What did Ashe know? That advice was little more than empty platitudes. In reality, you couldn’t just ask for help. You couldn’t just rely on people, count on them to be there, know they wouldn’t leave or disappear. 

( _I won’t leave. I promise. I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting here. For you._ )

“Felix?” 

Felix let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and faced Ashe again. The lights from the stage washed through Ashe’s silver hair. He watched Felix like he was watching a bird that might fly away any moment. 

“Fine,” Felix said.

Ashe smiled, but it lacked any warmth. “You don’t mean it.”

“I’ll ask for help,” Felix said. “If I need it.”

Ashe rolled his eyes. Still, when he offered his hand, he was smiling in earnest. “Come on.”

Felix took his hand. “Where?”

“We should go back. They’ve been butchering this song for the past 10 minutes. See what happens when you won’t let your friends help you?” 

“Right... sure.” 

Felix didn’t resist as Ashe pulled him along, as they climbed back up onto the platform, as they clapped for the makeshift band and Annette took another bow. It was strange being surrounded by so many people. Felix feared the tenuous bonds they’d built up over the course of their strange journey would snap any instant. He tried not to think too hard about it, not to rely too much on it. They would probably leave him in the end.

( _I won’t leave. Not ever._ ) 

( _If you come here … you’ll find me._ )

#

Felix fights. He slashes at the sorceress, absorbs her attacks, sends magic and GFs and sword strikes hurtling toward her. 

Ashe hangs back, down on one knee, clutching at his chest.

Another string pulled. It’s coming apart around him, like a blanket being undone one thread at a time. And he feels each one. Oh, he feels every strand as they’re yanked right out of his heart and shredded. Lost. 

Loog nuzzles at his knee. Ashe can hardly breathe as the smell of salt air and the sweet tones of Annette’s singing fade and fade and … disappear. 

It’s gone. That night, the people who were part of it, the warmth of the memory. It’s gone forever. He remembers only the lingering feeling of it, but the colors are washing away, the faces are gone, the music is lost.

He wonders if Felix can feel it. He must not, not by the way he just keeps on fighting. 

Or, perhaps, he does feel it just as acutely as Ashe and that is what spurs him on to fight as he does, too afraid of what awaits him in the stillness beyond the battle to stop. 

Ashe is doing this. He isn’t quite sure how, only that this is his fault. It’s his hands plucking the threads, his hands undoing the tapestry of their lives string by string. 

“It is the only way.”

The voice is everywhere – filling the dark, filling Ashe’s head, thrumming in his aching chest. It comes from within him and without simultaneously. 

He jerks his head up. The motion makes him dizzy, gives him double vision. When it settles, he sees the monstrous form of Ultimecia staring right back at him. She is more beast than human at this point, her arms ending in claws, spikes jutting out of her head, a terrifying void where her face should be. Ashe looks into that void and feels it bore right back into him.

“If you want to win, you must do this. Do you want to win?”

Ashe isn’t sure anymore. Can’t Felix hear this? How does he go on fighting while their very souls unravel? 

Ashe has a sense of what is gone, but it’s fuzzy, difficult to grasp, like water trickling between his fingers. Every drop washes away another memory. Does Felix remember any of it? What will dissipate next? 

The thought terrifies Ashe, leaves him gasping, nails digging into his own skin as he scrabbles for relief. 

But there is no relief in sight. Ultimecia is right. There is only one way to end this battle and it isn’t with gunblades. Ashe’s brief stint as a sorcerer himself has left some stain on him, some mark that now reveals the only path through this. 

If he’s going to stop time from compressing, if he’s going to give the world a second chance, save his friends, undo the damage wrought by Ultimecia, he must pull another thread. He must pull every thread. Until there is nothing left, nothing tangled in the chaos of time compression, until time is whole again and the world can move forward.

It will cost him everything.

Ashe closes his eyes and reaches for another strand.

#

_Memory 1_

Felix slouched against the wall. He held a glass of champagne, more to have something to occupy his hands than anything else, really. 

This party was stupid. The music was stupid. The lights. The formal uniform he had to wear. The people pretending to laugh and have a good time. What did any of this have to do with becoming a SeeD? He wasn’t here to drink and dance. He was here to be a SeeD and this – the glamour, the lights, the jewelry and makeup and coiffed hair – it had nothing to do with his purpose. 

A shooting star streaked past the glass ceiling. Felix contemplated wishing that he was anywhere else. He followed the light across the windows and down, to a man in a pale suit the color of starlight. Even his hair was silvery and ethereal. He might have dripped through the glass, a sliver of moonlight taking human form. 

He blinked, catching Felix watching him, but instead of startling away, the man just smiled and headed across the dancefloor toward Felix.

( _You were beautiful. Of course I smiled._ )

Felix braced, wishing he could push farther back against the wall, wishing he could disappear like that shooting star that had fled through the night sky. 

There was nowhere to run. Felix could do nothing but clutch the champagne glass tighter as the man strolled right up to him. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“...Hello.” 

“Ashe.”

“What?” 

“That’s my name,” the man, Ashe, said.

“Alright.”

Ashe laughed behind his hand. It revealed, unfortunately, the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, like that shooting star had left behind a trail of celestial dust on only him. 

Ashe took a step closer, looking Felix dead in the eyes. “You’re the best looking guy here.”

Felix blinked. “What?”

“Dance with me?”

Felix raised his glass to avoid blinking again and to cool the heat clawing its way into his face. What was with this guy? 

“Come on,” Ashe said. “Just one dance. You don’t have to like me.”

“...I can’t dance.” Why had Felix said that? Why had he offered any answer at all? He didn’t owe this Ashe guy an explanation. 

“You’ll be fine,” Ashe said. “I’m sure all that SeeD training included some sort of footwork … something. Let’s go.” 

He didn’t give Felix a chance to protest, taking his hand, setting his champagne aside for him, dragging him toward the dancefloor. 

Felix followed. His feet seemed to move on their own. He was sure he could break free and some part of him screamed for him to do just that, yet he didn’t. He let Ashe tug him along, dragged like a leaf caught in the wind and blown helplessly along. 

Ashe stopped and faced Felix. He set Felix’s hand at his hip, put his hand on Felix’s shoulder and clasped their free hands. When the music began, Ashe took a step toward Felix. Felix could do little but step back. Ashe dragged him along, making some sort of … box-like shape … or something. 

They were so close like this. Felix had just met this guy and already he could smell the faint mint on his breath. It made Felix dizzy, clumsy, and he stumbled, nearly tripping over his own feet. 

Ashe merely reset them, placing their hands in the correct positions so they could start over.

This hardly improved matters. Felix stumbled through the steps. When Ashe swung him out, perhaps for some sort of turn or dip, Felix came crashing back in, nearly knocking them both to the floor.

He gave up, too frustrated to continue, and started to stomp away. But Ashe didn’t release his hand. He kept holding on, not letting Felix run away. 

( _If I’d let go then, how much would have changed? Would we be here now? How much depended on this alone?_ )

This time, Ashe did not push in. He left Felix with space. Their hands touched, but they stood apart. Felix nearly sighed with relief. ( _I know._ )

Ashe smiled as though at some private joke. He started to step. Simple steps, clean steps. This, Felix understood. It was almost like a military march. It followed the beat, kept their bodies apart. Yet as they danced Felix had the feeling he was never truly alone. Ashe was always there, always showing him where to go next, how to move, what step he should take. 

They glided around each other. Ashe turned under Felix’s arm, smooth and elegant. He moved so easily, like a fighter. ( _Like a dancer._ )

They released their hands, but Felix was not alone. He knew Ashe was still there as they slid around each other. When they came back around, Ashe took his hand again, a reassuring weight, and arched out. It felt like a ball thrown to the end of its tether. Felix understood immediately. He curled his fingers, bent his arm just a little, and Ashe spiraled back toward him, rolling in against Felix’s arm.

They stopped like that, hands pressed together, chests nearly touching, Felix’s arm around Ashe’s waist. 

Felix should have jerked away, should have recoiled, should have panicked. But he didn’t. 

The room had gone a little darker. The music had gone a little quieter. Felix stood in a safe little pocket of space occupied only by himself and Ashe. From so close, he could nearly count the freckles on his cheeks. 

Pops and crackles sounded overhead. Felix looked up. Where once there’d been a tiny streak of starlight, now fireworks burst, brilliant splashes of color dripping down the night sky. 

Felix watched, content to linger in this moment on the dancefloor, strangely sedate despite circumstances that would have made him run any other time. ( _I wanted to stay like that too._ ) He couldn’t quite name what kept him there, his arm still around the strange man who’d dragged him out here in the first place, but for once Felix felt no urge to flee. 

Ashe shifted in his hold. ( _What an idiot I was. God, what an idiot._ ) He glanced down. Ashe was looking back over his shoulder, pulling away. 

They separated. Felix immediately felt a little colder, bereft of some vital warmth. 

“I’m sorry,” Ashe said. His eyes skittered between Felix and something past his shoulder. “I just have to do something. I was waiting for someone.” 

“Oh.” 

Of course.

( _No..._ )

Felix did not argue as Ashe slipped from his arms, as he left Felix alone on the dancefloor.

( _You aren’t alone._ )

He turned to watch Ashe go, a strange pang tightening his chest.

( _I’m still here._ )

( _I’m still waiting._ )

( _If you come here..._ )

#

Ashe feels the thread snap and something in his chest breaks as well. His forehead is nearly on the floor, whatever counts as a floor in this timeless, wretched place. 

He’s lost something precious, something he’ll never get back.

And the worst part is, he can’t even remember what it was.

Lights. Bright colors. Movement. Warmth. Music, perhaps. And then it is gone, the thread unraveling, stretching, snapping. 

Ashe weeps for whatever he’s lost, whatever is gone. His mind may not remember, but his whole body does. It can only communicate what is gone is the rawest terms, in pain that tightens his chest, seizes his lungs, leaves him gasping and crying all at once, folded in on himself. 

He manages to look up. Through the haze of agony and tears, he sees two figures. The monster, he recognizes. She is the one pulling the strings, helping him break them one by one.

It is her fault, he knows. His hands might do the work, but she is the one who has twisted time such that he must fix it.

The other figure... 

Ashe’s heart recognizes the man immediately. It lurches in his chest, desperate to be heard, but Ashe only vaguely knows the man with the gunblade. He’s fighting, slashing over and over at the sorceress, cutting her down. He is strong and fearless and Ashe aches to reach him. 

He struggles to his feet and stumbles toward the man. 

They will win. They came here to do exactly this and they are winning. They are setting things right. Did they know what this victory would cost? Ashe wishes he could remember, but there are so few strands left. 

He follows the memories etched into his body rather than the faltering tapestry left in tatters in his mind. His feet know the way. They take him to the man in black, the man with the gunblade. 

Ashe reaches him as the sorceress falls. Ultimecia’s twisted form lies on the ground, dissolving into time. Her gaze is sharp until the very end, as though she’s daring Ashe to finish what the two of them have started. 

No, what she’s started.

Ashe can’t remember much, but the hate that burns in his chest makes him sure of that much. This is her doing. And even if his hands must be the ones that incinerate the last of what he loves, its hers that built the fire. 

“Who are you?”

The fire cools in a flash. Ashe faces the man with the gunblade. That face is so familiar. Something in him knows it so well. He’s sure he’s seen it softened by moonlight, hardened by anger, smoothed out by affection. He’s sure he knows those lips, knows the full depth of those amber eyes, but now they are a mystery to him. 

“Ashe.” 

Ashe nods. 

He doesn’t know why, but he steps closer to the man. The man opens his arms almost mechanically, as though this is a motion he knows intimately, and Ashe slots into them, feeling more at home than he can ever recall being – not that that means much anymore. Still, there is something so right about whatever this is, so perfect. It cannot be an accident. His whole body tells him it isn’t, even as his mind fumbles for memories long lost. 

“Felix.” 

The name emerges on its own, sighing out from somewhere deep, deep in his core. It’s right, he knows it, but even so it’s nice to feel a confirmation in the stroke of Felix’s hand over his hair. 

“What is this?” Felix says. “What happened?”

Ashe doesn’t want to answer, partly because of what he’s already done, partly because of what he must do next. 

He pulls back just enough to be able to see Felix. He tries to map that face onto his soul. It’s pointless, he knows, but he can’t help trying. 

Felix realizes what he’s doing.

“Don’t,” he says.

“We’ve come all this way.” It was a long journey, Ashe is sure, even if the specifics are gone. He feels weary down to his very bones. The thought of how long they must have been together horrifies him. Already, he has no sense of just how much is lost. 

“Please,” Felix says, “please don’t do this.” 

“I have to,” Ashe says. “Otherwise, what was the point?”

“We can find another way. There’s...” Felix’s face scrunches up as though in pain. He’s trying to remember, Ashe thinks. He’s digging for thoughts that are nothing more than darkness now. 

Ashe wishes the memories had left his body as thoroughly as they left his mind. His whole chest clenches around the sight and smell and feel of the man in his arms. It hasn’t forgotten a single instant. He knows he loved this man, knows it from the way a jagged spike carves right through his sternum and squeezes the breath from his lungs. 

The next time he breathes, it’s ragged with tears. 

“I’ll be here,” Ashe says, even as he starts to unravel the final thread. 

“No,” Felix says. His eyes get wider. He holds Ashe tighter. “Please don’t do this. I can fight it. I can...”

“I’ll always be here,” Ashe says. 

The strand is loose. Once he pulls it out, time will decompress, the sorceress’s magic will be undone. The world will return to the way it was, the way it should be. Except for this.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Ashe says.

“Ashe, please.” 

“So if you come here--”

“No.” Felix is clutching him now, shouting. “No.”

“You’ll find me.”

He pulls.

( _I promise._ )

#

Felix awoke in the infirmary.

A breeze ruffled the curtains. Doctor Kadowaki sat at her desk in Balamb Garden’s medical ward, jotting notes on a chart. 

Felix rubbed his forehead. It throbbed, a headache already forming behind his eyes. There was some deep wound etched into his skin, but that was not what was causing him pain. There was something else, like he’d gotten kicked in the chest. 

“How are you feeling?” 

Doctor Kadowaki stood over him.

“OK, I guess,” Felix said. 

“Any pain still?”

Still? He shook his head, unsure of how to answer that. His whole body felt strange, light, like it had recently suffered something terrible and was still weak from recovering from it. 

He sat up. He seemed fine phsyically. Nothing broken or beaten up except for that strange scar on his forehead. 

“You need to take it easy during training,” Doctor Kadowaki said. “Next time you might really get hurt.” 

Felix shrugged. 

“SeeD’s going to need you some day,” Doctor Kadowaki said. “Can’t go getting hurt before you’ve even passed your exam. Who knows what kind of madness the world will need to be saved from?”

The doctor laughed, but Felix’s stomach turned. 

Some part of him knew. 

( _If you come here..._ )

Some part of him knew exactly what they’d be facing. He had no name for it, but...

( _You’ll find me._ )

He knew that when the time came, he would be the one to fight it, the one to bring it down, the one to set the world ( _time_ ) right again.

( _I promise._ )

No matter what it cost.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive shoutout to Stardust Cocoa, who helped me plot this crazy thing. <3
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


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